Why do many faculties cannot teach effectively at business schools?

There are a number of reasons why bad teaching has not been eliminated even from the top business schools in India. The main one is also the simplest: there are not enough good professors in the country to cover the teaching needs of business schools. This means that business schools are in a constant battle to poach each other’s top professors, offering them either huge salaries or substantial benefits to win them over, or possibly attracting them because the school can offer a close and cooperative collegiate environment. But then again, many professors prefer to work in a smaller school where the culture is more to their liking, where they can establish closer relationships with their colleagues, or where they can simply have more of a say in the way the school is run. Sometimes, schools have little alternative but to hire professors that are not as good teachers as they should be.

It is also important to realise that in the eyes of the school, professors do a lot more than just teach students. It can make a lot of sense for the school to hang onto a not-that-great teacher if he is a star researcher, or if his general reputation or business connections helps the school secure either additional funding or provides them with corporate clients for their shorter, custom-built programs.

It may also be the case that a professor simply has a bad year, perhaps because of personal problems. The school is an organisation like any other, and will show a certain measure of loyalty towards its employees. Obviously, you don’t fire a professor that has served you well for decades because he suddenly has a bad year or two. You let him keep teaching in the hope that he gets over it, and suffer the inevitable student complaints for a few years.

A similar situation arises when the professors are new. Obviously, not all professors are great teachers from day one, and they need time in front of a class to get there. The school recognises this, and accepts that new professors get bad class reviews for the first year or two.

Of course, as an MBA student, you have little appreciation of these facts, not least because you have a significantly shorter time perspective than the school. What do you care whether a professor has personal issues, is a great research asset, or needs time to develop as a teacher? All you know is that you are not getting what you paid for. Believe me, it is supremely frustrating to sign up for a potentially fascinating class, only to discover that you learn little because the professor kerfuffles his way through the sessions, expertly managing to dodge all the things that make the subject interesting. Or to do badly in an exam because the young and unproven professor couldn’t make himself understood in a tongue known outside the halls of academia. Who cares if he will be a great professor in five years? You are leaving the school in two.

But all things said and done the primary reson for the acute lack of good faculty at the business schools in India is their salary. It is a pittance if you compare it with what they would be drawing if they continued working in the industry. Many of them have prior industry experience from 5 to 20 years. But the best of them prefer to work there than come to the campus. If you check out the names of the best managers who have come out from India and ruling the industry globally you will not get a single person who has come back to the campus to teach. Hence in most cases people who have failed in the industry or have retired teach.

"Those who can do; those who can't teach." George Bernard Shaw's words.